Colonials Beat Writer Michael Anderson
Jul 21, 2021
Williamsburg – After an inaugural spring season that included a 3-1 conference record and a spot in the Atlantic Coast Football Alliance American Alliance championship game, the Williamsburg Colonials look to build upon that success this fall.
“We are looking to beef up our offensive line.” Coach Dave Willis said. “We were undersized for most of it (the season). That and conditioning. We run a very fast paced offense that was supposed to wear out the defenses, but it wore us out too.”
This past weekend, on the 17th, the team held the first of two tryouts for those wishing to continue their playing days. Although Coach Willis is looking to for more size on the offensive line, that wasn’t exactly what happened.
“We added more speed. Not necessarily more size.” He stated. “We had a few more running backs come out because our main running back from the spring is now playing college ball and isn’t coming back.” He isn’t worried about the loss of their number one back, however.
“I think the guys we have can replace him pretty good.” He iterated.
The addition of speed should help the offensive inconsistency they had during the spring season. In the wins, the Colonials averaged a little over 27 points per game. But in the losses, the points per game average fell to four.
“When our offense is on, it’s on! But when we struggle, we struggle because there wasn’t any getting out of the funk once we started going down that hill.” Coach Willis explained. “That is something we are trying to improve on, too. Once one thing went wrong it seemed like things just kept piling on and piling on until we could never get out of it. We are trying to get out of that (mindset) so that we are never out of the game.” He is hoping that Dr. Bo Guynn, a sports psychologist consultant, can assist with helping the players to learn not to dwell on mistakes and learn to let things go so they can move onto the next play.
“He is a big part of our team.” Coach Willis stated.
In addition to team improvements, Coach Willis now has a full coaching staff (something he didn’t have during the spring season), with the sole exception of a running backs coach.
“In the spring, it was just me and the defensive coordinator, David Scott.” He said. “We had Coach Chris McMurtrie but he was in the Navy and wasn’t around the whole time. But now I’ve got the defensive coordinator coming back, and I added pretty much all of the position coaches except for the running backs coach. So, I will be the head coach, the offensive coordinator, and working with the running backs too.”
When discussing the coaching additions, Coach Willis went on to say that adding the additional coaches is the biggest area the team will benefit from since the spring season because it allows him to break practices down into specific positional groups for more specialized (one on one) coaching.
As for conditioning, Coach Willis also added a conditioning coach, whose first day was at tryouts last week, but will be with the team for the rest of the season.
“We could tell some of the guys had been working out (since the spring).” He said. “I was doing off season workouts for the team during the summer and we had some guys coming out. But they are ahead of where they were in the spring.”
With the addition of the strength and conditioning coach, Coach Willis is looking forward to developing the strength and conditioning philosophy that will ultimately define the team. Knowing that his coaching philosophy includes emphasis on a blitz heavy defense and a fast-paced, wear-them-down offense, and with a nine game schedule that includes eight conference games, conditioning will surely be the key to this team’s success this fall.
Tryouts continue this Saturday, July 24th from 6-8 PM at the Warhill Sports Complex. For more information or to register for tryouts, please visit https://www.colonialsfootball.com.